


Only Time Tells

by xevinx



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post Episode: s01e07 Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad, Shroom-high Paul, Supportive Hugh, Time Loop Angst, there's so much love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-29 09:02:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12627558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xevinx/pseuds/xevinx
Summary: Hugh tries to convince Paul to talk through what he experienced in the time loops — but the conversation ends up taking a rather unexpected direction.





	Only Time Tells

"Do you want to talk about the loops?"

Dr Hugh Culber was nothing if not patient, especially with his partner. But it had been three days — 87 hours to be precise — and Stamets had successfully avoided discussing anything about the fifty-odd time loops he had experienced, all but one with devastating consequences. All that he had given Hugh was a two or three sentence summary of why the hell Paul had practically dragged him to their room and convinced him to stay there with no explanation apart from _"Just trust me, please"_.

Paul was acting as though he'd moved on fine because everything was okay now, it had all worked out. But Hugh knew him too well enough not to believe that he wasn't in some way scarred by those events. And that was despite the fact that they had barely seen each other due to already misaligned shifts compounded by Stamets's ridiculous amounts of overtime. So as they finished off their respective dinners set across from each other, the first meal they'd been able to share in those three days, Hugh had delicately raised the issue.

"Why? There's not really anything to say." Paul murmured, hand freezing as it reached out for his cup of water. "None of it really happened."

There was something in the way that he spoke that last sentence, each word stressed and drawn out...

_None of it really happened._

Hugh was certain that Paul had been repeating those words over and over inside, drilling them into his own head through the past three days in some attempt at forging a coping mechanism. They might have broken out of Mudd's time loop without any physical trace of any of the iterations' previous events, but there must have been a mental and emotional toll taken on Stamets that couldn't be erased so straightforwardly.

"Why don't we head to our quarters and actually, you know, _talk_ about everything you saw?" With a hand placed over one of Paul's, Hugh forced the smallest of smiles. "It can only help –"

"No, I should get going back to engineering, there's a lot to be done, I'm recalibrating a part of the spore drive system to be more efficient in its –"

Hugh raised his eyebrows and matched them with a daring look in his eyes. "Your shift is over for the day, _I checked._ As is mine."

"Yes, alright," Paul responded in mock surrender, "if you want to get bogged down in pedantry, my shift is _technically_ over but that doesn't mean my work is –"

"Your work's never over!" Hugh wasn't one to raise his voice but it did go up just a little before he reclaimed control of himself. In a way, his measured, quiet voice cut through even more effectively. "I've always been supportive, even when I don't see you for days despite our working only a minute's walk away from each other, but this is _different."_

Paul had only just opened his mouth to reply, not even quite sure what he was going to say, when a couple of crew members taking a seat a few tables away caught his eye.

"I matchmade those two." He tilted his head in their direction, a self-satisfied little smirk dancing on his lips. "A large part of the loops was spent doing that, in fact."

"Wait, Burnham and... is it Tyler?"

"Mmhmm. They had their first kiss; it's a shame that doesn't all count, now. They so obviously like each other, it's kind of hilarious.  _Young love_... it left me thinking about us." Paul kicked Culber's foot bashfully under the table. "How we met."

"Oh?" Hugh very easily recognised the astromycologist's attempt at evasion but he humoured him for the moment. "How my wonderfully dulcet tones serenaded you into buying me a drink?"

Paul rolled his eyes and yet his smile widened into a full-out grin. "Buying you a drink was another way of trying to get you to shut up."

"Oh, _of course_ it was." Hugh missed seeing Paul smile like that, even if it had only been a few days. There was no denying that Stamets was often... _prickly_ towards others — especially when they lacked his respect — but he had alway been different with his lover. More smiles and jokes, and Hugh had always felt blessed to see that side of him. So as much as he knew that he needed to confront what he'd been through, he allowed Paul this banter for now.

"Yes! When you were drinking, you weren't singing. Humming, or whatever that was!"

They chuckled in unison, the sounds of their laughs mingling into an almost harmonious melody. Culber leaned forward, actually sucked into this lighthearted conversation. Paul had him caught: hook, line and sinker.

"I wasn't humming when we were  _kissing_ either, huh?" he teased, whispering in that soft, husky voice reserved for Paul and that made him weak at the knees.

"Mmm but that wasn't to shut you up, dear Doctor..."

There wasn't anywhere further for this to go, sat in public. Stamets's little tangent was exhausted and the corners of Culber's lips dropped back down in record time, quiet concern passing over his features once more.

"Come back with me. Please."

Stamets tipped his head downwards, wrestling with himself inside. As much as he'd chosen a road of vehement denial, he knew deep down that he needed some kind of cathartic release sooner or later. And Hugh was always such a good listener, so caring and understanding. In fact, for a moment there he even wondered why he hadn't opened up to him sooner.

The walk to their quarters was silent but halfway through Paul slipped his hand surreptitiously into Hugh's, whose heart both fluttered and wrenched at the gesture. As soon as they got inside they sat down. Side by side on their bed, backs against the headboard and legs stretched out in front of them.  

"I can't imagine how it would have felt to see people you work with and care about die over and over again. Burnham, the captain, others on the bridge..."

"I knew it wasn't real, and I had to focus on defeating Mudd, so..."

"You don't have to do that with me. Act all strong and unaffected. It _felt_ real, so help me understand and I can help you."

Paul was allowed whatever time he needed to gather his thoughts and summon up courage, and he took it too.

"It wasn't only the bridge crew, Hugh." Another few long moments of silence stretched out before them. "You died more than a few times, too."

Culber's stomach dropped, a sick feeling rose in his throat. "You were there every time?"

"No." Paul hated that. He hated that Hugh had faded away into nothingness confused and in pain and  _alone,_  time after time. As Hugh had so insightfully said to him, just because the loops hadn't ended up real didn't mean that they hadn't  _felt_ real. The guilt was very much real.

"Wait, you told me to stay here, though," realised Culber. "So how could I have come across Mudd...?"

"You say that _I'm_ hopeless but do _you_ ever listen to _me?_  In many of the earlier loops where I had tried to convince you to just stay here you had done the opposite. You had run off to medbay to be of assistance treating injured crew members."

That was just how his _dear Doctor_ was. Giving, caring, almost to a fault. They were both unwaveringly dedicated to their work, it was one of things that had drawn them together in the first place.

"I'm sorry..." Hugh rested a gentle hand on the other's thigh.

"Don't be. Look, I know it wasn't real but it all got me thinking about losing you, in any way." Paul slid his own hand under Hugh's and locked their fingers together. "About how I couldn't bear it. I know that I've changed. Since injecting myself with the tardigrade's DNA, every time we jump I – it's like... you know when you're drunk but not too drunk, and you know you're acting differently but you're not with it enough to change that?" He waited for a nod of acknowledgment from the other man before continuing, puzzled as that nod was. "This is all so _bizarre_ , but I need you to know that I'm still in here. Your Paul is still in here."

"I know that." Hugh pulled their linked hands to his chest and regarded his lover with a gaze that held distinct sadness behind it. "Oh god, Paul, amorcito, _of course_ I know that."

"This time loop business, it's changed me again. And you're still here. You're always here, loving me _unconditionally_ , and I don't know why but I know that I can't lose it. I know I'm hard to love but oh my god, _you’re not_. You're literally _perfect_ and I'm sorry that I don't tell you that enough."

"You're not hard to love," protested Culber. "You're brilliant. And I don't just mean in your work, that's indisputable, but I mean in all the little ways that you love me."

Sure, Stamets's language of love wasn't flowers and chocolates and candlelight dinners — but it was affectionate teasing and late night back rubs and humouring his tired end-of-shift rants, and Hugh loved all of it.

"You always see the best in me," Paul went on, turning his whole body around to face the other man properly and tucking his feet beneath himself as he did so. He pulled their joined hands down and proceeded to hold onto Hugh's with both of his own. There was a solution to how he felt so adrift lately, so up in the air. "I have never needed anything more than I  _need_ to spend the rest of my life with you. So might you... do me the honour of marrying me, my _dear Dr Culber?"_

Now, Hugh had thought about marriage a number of times before. Once when they first told each other they loved each other, while fooling around. Once when they were finally assigned to the same ship after exceedingly long months spent apart on different vessels. And _every time_ that Paul looked at him with that beautifully fond expression that made Hugh feel as though they could overcome anything life threw at them, together.

He'd never plucked up the courage to actually bite the bullet and propose, though. He'd also never thought that Paul would get there before him.

Maybe his timing was kind of off and he wasn't in a state of mind to be perfectly eloquent or particularly concise, but _oh_ was Stamets running with it.

Hugh tuned back in midway through a sentence:

"– realise how deeply we're _connected_ , you know, and it just makes sense, we have to be together, we have to stay together _for good_ and –" 

"Paul, honey, you're really rambling."

"But I just... I love you so much, Hugh. The truth is we could very well die on this ship. We're right on the front line of a war, as our captain insists on reminding us all too often, one that neither one of us signed up for, so –"

Culber silenced Stamets with a finger raised to his lips. "Being in the middle of a war isn't a good reason to get married."

"No –" he shook his head "– but the way that I feel about you _is."_

"And how is that?" Hugh asked, head cocked to one side in curiosity.

"22." Paul heaved in a lungful of air to calm his nerves, to no avail. "That's the number of times that I lost you."

"How do you know the exact number if you didn't see me...?"

"Because I could _feel_  you, every single time... I  _felt_  losing you from all the way across the ship. I don't know if it's something to do with how I seem to have access to additional dimensions now, as a part of this universe-wide mycelial network, I haven't worked out the science but... I could sense _you."_

The doctor remained silent —  _stunned_ silent, waiting on Stamets to elaborate. Which he did, soon enough.

"The first time, I lost a loop because of it. I felt so strangely compelled to _run_ to medbay and I didn't know why, I knew only that I absolutely had to find you. But I was too late, and it felt as though a part of me had been _ripped out_  –" he choked on his words, chest tightened and a sob stuck somewhere in his throat.

"Paul, you don't have to talk about this all now if you don't want to."

Culber shuffled closer, intending to embrace the other man, but Stamets raised his free hand, palm facing outwards, to ask for a little more time.

"You were right, I need to _get it out,_ to purge myself of the experience." He sighed deeply, fighting to remain composed. "It _never_ got any easier. Only felt counter-productive, having to let you... _die,_ every time that you did, so that I could focus on trying to _save_ you and everyone else."

"You were so brave, you know that? _You_ did it, _you_ saved us all. Lorca has nothing on you."

Stamets almost smiled but he was still burdened with the weight of one particularly horrifying memory that he needed to get off his shoulders.

"One time I actually saw you. That time you had been ordered up to the bridge and you caught my eye as Mudd shot you and all I could do was mouth _‘I love you’_ and hope you heard me, hope you knew before..." He swallowed harshly, but couldn't quite push down the emotion. "I ran across the bridge as fast as my legs could carry me but I couldn't even  _hold you_ in time..."

This time, Hugh didn't hesitate in wrapping his arms around Paul and sliding a hand up his back to cup the nape of his neck.

"I'm here, okay? That doesn't matter because I'm right here. I know you love me and I'm _not_ going anywhere."

At first, Paul only nodded against Hugh's shoulder and lifted his own arms to hold him that little bit closer. Feeling Hugh's heart beating against his own chest affirmed his presence and helped the reality of those words — the _real_ reality — sink in.

"I should probably have proposed a long time ago," Paul eventually said, "without needing to have gone through losing you, and if I know you at all I know you've probably thought about us getting married too, before..."

"Paul, I don't _need_ us to get married." Hugh pulled back a touch to look Stamets right in the eye, his gaze brimming with love and tenderness as he pushed a stray lock back from his forehead. "I already know that this is... you know, _it_. Although I have to say, referring to you as my 'partner' sometimes makes it sound as though we run a law firm together. Or as though we're a pair of long-suffering police detectives or something."

"So... could we be husbands, then?" The word rolled off Paul's tongue with the greatest of ease, sounding as though it was coined especially for the two of them.

Hugh pressed his lips to Paul's and they both smiled through the kiss, cherishing this moment that seemed to negate everything outside of that room, everything bad, painful and uncertain. This much was certain.

"Okay. _Husbands_ it is."

**Author's Note:**

> Husbands! >.< my gay heart couldn't resist
> 
> Thank you for reading, comments and kudos are greatly appreciated - especially as I'm very much still getting used to writing these two!
> 
> come yell at me about the space boos on tumblr @xevinx


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